This country of ours is about to celebrate its 249th birthday, yet we probably would’ve never been born if it weren’t for a little book, a pamphlet really, penned by a human being named Thomas Paine. It was called Common Sense.
Its pages helped fan the flames of revolution, as they say, laying out logical arguments why colonial America should no longer be ruled by England — arguments on the absurdity of, say, a small and faraway island ruling over a continent an ocean away.
It may be time to return to some common sense. We only have but one page here so let’s focus on but one issue: The richest of the rich getting richer while the rest of us vie for a continually shrinking sliver of the pie.
The wealthiest American at our country’s birth was a Maryland-based agriculturalist named Charles Carrol whose personal wealth in 1776, per ncesc.com, was equivalent to $375 million in today’s currency. Fast forward to April of 2025 and, per Forbes’ annual billionaire list, Elon Musk was ranked first, coming in with a cool $342 billion. This is 912 times more personal wealth than Carrol, who, again, was the richest American at the time of our birth.
That doesn’t make common sense.
Neither does this: Forbes’ 2024 List of the 400 Wealthiest Americans, published last October, also ranked Musk at number one, but with a scant $244 billion to his name. This means that in the 7 months between publication of the two lists, Musk accumulated $98 billion more in personal wealth. This equates to approximately $460 million per day. That’s $19 mill an hour, folks.
But the trend isn’t limited to just a single person or even a handful; the combined wealth of the 400 wealthiest Americans in 2024 was $5.4 trillion — up nearly one whole trillion dollars from their 2023 total of $4.5 trill.
I hear you, though; surely if the richest of the rich are getting richer, the rest of us must be trending up as well? Not so much. Once wide and thriving, our country’s middle class has steadily declined in wealth since 1970; while, according to an Institute for Policy Studies article, the wealthiest 20 Americans now possess more personal wealth than does the entire bottom half of our population.
Common sense would tell us that something is wrong with this picture. Common sense would tell us that something needs to change.
But how? While no one seems to be quite sure, a good first step to any problem is to first realize there is a problem. And as we celebrate our beloved country this Fourth of July, this realization may lead us to something else — to the understanding that the biggest divide in America comes not from right to left, as it seems we’re often led to believe, but in the chasm between top and bottom.
No matter who we did or didn’t vote for in whatever election, we regular-folk Americans have way more in common with each other than we think. So, perhaps this Fourth of July it’s time for all of us — I ain’t talking about the billionaires or the politicians at the top, I’m talking about we, the people — to see beyond our petty differences and find the common sense in uniting for a common cause: ourselves.
